Ann Ciardullo and Keith Green publish a monthly blog/newsletter that goes out to almost 10,000 people. It supports a singular proposition: “If you’re lucky enough to be in the Hamptons…you’re lucky enough.” As it turns out, that simple sentence celebrates their life on the East End as well. For the last 10 years, they have been top-tier brokers at Sotheby’s International Realty but have also spent the decade carving out a shared life with family and friends. They truly believe they are “lucky enough.”
To say they have each other’s backs is a resounding understatement. They also have an instinctive understanding of where each other’s strengths lie – and when to pass the baton to the other. This is true whether they are handling a complex real estate transaction or building and nurturing a movie-setlike vegetable garden at their Hamptons home.
Years ago, when their children started having children, Green designed and built a vegetable garden for Ciardullo at their East Hampton home, where she could teach their five young grandchildren how to plant and nurture vegetables.
“When I built that first garden, I think it unleashed the inner farmer in Ann,” Green says. “I watched her pad out to the garden every morning in her PJs with a cup of coffee and spend time hand-watering the roots and talking to the plants. Her plants were magnificent, and the vegetables were outrageous.”
As this past winter turned to spring, Green reimagined the garden and developed plans to replace it with a much larger, more complex creation. Beginning in February, he donned a tool belt and engaged in what he described as the most “back-breaking work of my life.” Following the plans they devised, he set out to build “the 1,000-square-foot garden of Ann’s dreams,” he says. He first had to remove six cubic yards (100 wheelbarrow loads) of loam, replacing it with six cubic yards of rock dust (another 100 wheelbarrows) for the foundation. Then he hand-laid the “basket-weave” patterned brick paths throughout the garden. “If you ever hire a mason, pay them extra,” Green admonishes. “I literally couldn’t believe how much I hurt.” Next came building 75 linear feet of 16-inch-high raised-bed cedar boxes to be filled with 150 cubic feet of new composted soil.
While their property was already protected from deer, the garden still had to have a rabbit-proof fence as they have so many cotton-tailed bunnies running around. “The imperative was that the fence have an agricultural personality, while still complementing our wonderful home and grounds,” he says. Of course, he designed and built it himself.
But once it was done, he was done as well, “because this is my garden,” Ciardullo exclaimed, as she reminded her partner not to even think about touching a plant. Her inaugural plantings included tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, string beans, cabbage, strawberries, basil and more.
“Cabbage was a new crop for me,” Ciardullo says. “But Keith has this fabulous recipe for coleslaw so I thought I’d give it a try. He used his same recipe, but the whole family agreed that my cabbage made it better than ever before.”
“The garden project turned out to be a metaphor for how we work together in real estate. We know when to pass the baton to the other and then back again,” they say, seemingly at the same time.
While Ciardullo and Green work closely together on many deals, some clients feel more comfortable working with one of them in particular. For instance, Ciardullo has worked with one set of celebrity clients for the last 15 years, assisting them with four Hamptons transactions.
“They’re comfortable working with me – I know the whole history and the whole family, so it just seems organic,” Ciardullo says. For the clients’ latest transaction, Ciardullo carried the weight of responsibility for the entire deal. But as the transaction approached the finish line, a negotiating component suddenly arose that was very opportunistic for the client, and Ciardullo decided the client’s interests would be best served if Green helped with the negotiating. “Ann said to me, ‘Please jump in,’” Green says. “And under her direction, together we did one final negotiation and wound up with a great outcome for her client.”
Green and Ciardullo consider their seven grandchildren to be among their great blessings in life.
“Our relationships with our grandchildren are seamless in that the question of who’s a blood relative never comes up – we’re just Grandma and Grandpa – and we feel the same level of love and commitment for each other’s grandchildren as the ones we are technically related to,” Ciardullo says.
Each of the five youngest grandchildren (ages 5-9) planted a little part of the new garden this year. “They can’t wait to eat the tomatoes and cucumbers they planted,” Ciardullo says. “It may sound corny, but we ‘cultivate’ our relationships with each of our grandchildren individually, and each with the same level of care.”
The same is true with their clients.
“Our relationship with every client is unique,” Green says. “We bring the same level of commitment to each of them, but every client has different needs and approaches life differently. So every transaction is different because we build the process around them.”
Several years ago, a newly married couple bought a weekend home through them. “We helped them find a wonderful, fun home,” Ciardullo says. “A few years later, they had a baby, and they decided to make the Hamptons their year-round home.” Green and Ciardullo knew that “weekend home” would no longer suit the family’s lifestyle, so they started, on their own, to search for a new home that would be a better fit. “The couple wasn’t quite ready to move, but we found a home that was perfect for them,” Ciardullo says.
They invited the couple for dinner, and after eating, Green suggested they write down the criteria that the couple deemed most important for their next home – “the 10 things that mattered most.”
“After we went through that exercise, we said to them, ‘Tomorrow at 10 a.m., we are taking you to your new house,’” Ciardullo recalls. “They said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’” But as it turned out, the couple loved the home that Ciardullo and Green had painstakingly researched for them, and they purchased it.
“Today, that family is the happiest family in the Hamptons,” Ciardullo says. “They’re in the dream home that we literally picked for them. Have they put their mark on it? You bet they have, brilliantly and lovingly … but we picked it for them!” Ciardullo exclaims.
Many of Green and Ciardullo’s clients have become close friends. “We find commonalities with our clients. We learn about their families, and they know about our lives as well. We recently sold a $10 million property to a world-famous celebrity. At the closing she mentioned she would like to have a vegetable garden, and I showed her some pictures of the one Keith was building for me. Last week she texted me from Italy to ask how my vegetable garden was doing. How lovely is that?!” Ciardullo demures.
Just as they built and nurtured their garden, Green and Ciardullo apply their individual strengths working side-by-side when serving their clients. Such was the case recently with clients who wanted to build their dream house from scratch.
“We found them a spectacular piece of land south of the highway in Georgica, managed the negotiation in a bidding war and even put them together with the builder and the landscape architect,” Ciardullo says. “The point is, they may think it’s their home, but as far as we’re concerned, it’s our project as well,” Green adds. “Of course, when it’s finally done, we’ll know it’s time to pass the baton to them … along with the keys!”
Perhaps nothing sums up how Ciardullo and Green feel about their lives better than the fact that they have just established a comprehensive website, sharing everything about their real estate work, and their lives as well. It’s called luckyenough.com, of course!
PARTNER CONTENT
This article was the cover story for the Labor Day weekend issue of Behind The Hedges inside Dan’s Papers. Read the full digital edition here.
